say that prior to this subsistence in a state of becoming, we had a subsistence as men in true being, though different men from what we now are, and possessing a deiform nature? We were likewise pure souls and intellects conjoined with universal essence, being parts of the intelligible (world); not disjoined or separated from it, but pertaining to the whole of it. For neither are we now cut off from it. For even now the man that is here wishing to be another man, accedes (or approaches in thought) to the man that is there, and which, finding us (for we are not external to the universe), surrounds us with himself, and conjoins himself to that man which each of us then was. Just as if one voice and one discourse existing, some one from a different place applying his ears should hear and receive what was said, and should become in energy a certain hearing, in consequence of having that which energizes present with itself. After the same manner we become both the man which is in the intelligible (or ideal world) and the man which is here." (Translations from the Greek of some Treatises of Plotinus, by Thomas Taylor, p. 41.)

This is only the soul or psychical man, uniting itself to the inward divine pneuma or spirit. The two extreme links of the chain of our being are brought together in a circle, and man in the discrete degrees of his existence is made a completed unity. The ideal and immortal man, which is latent in most, becomes the actual and conscious man. This is salvation in the Pauline and true Christian sense, but is a conception which belongs to a spiritual philosophy that had an existence in ages long anterior to the advent of Christianity.

CHAPTER II.

THE APPLICATION OF THE IDEALISTIC

PHILOSOPHY TO THE

CURE OF MENTAL AND BODILY MALADIES.

THE philosophy of idealism as presented in the preceding lesson is to be applied to the cure of disease, as it was by Jesus the Christ. All disease, so far as it has a material or bodily expression, must have had a preëxistence in us as a fixed mode of thought, that is, as an idea. To expunge from the mind and obliterate from our soul-life the idea of it, is to remove the cause of it, and hence to cure the malady. How best to accomplish this is the problem to be solved by our transcendental medical science and practical metaphysics. To its solution we will now devote our best energies.

It is our aim to reproduce the system of cure practiced by Jesus, and adapt it to modern modes of thought and expression. Now Jesus was the prince of idealists, as Keshub Chunder Sen has said, and his religion is supreme idealism. (Oriental Christ, by P. C. Mozoomdar, p. 34.) Without a knowledge of the philosophy of idealism it is impossible to comprehend the profound truths of Christianity or any of the Oriental religions. With Jesus, as with Gautama the Buddha, ideal things, existing in a sphere of being interior to the world of sense, were the only real and enduring things. All else was evanescent and ever changing.

We have endeavored to find in the realm of mind certain fixed principles as fundamental, immutably true, and trustworthy as the principles of geometry, by which the mariner guides his course upon the pathless deep. In the New Testament doctrine of faith, as it was viewed by Jesus, and

Paul, and even Plato, we affirm that we have such a principle in its application to the cure of the diseases of the soul and the body. When properly understood we see why, as Jesus declared, it is ever unto us according to our faith (Matt. ix: 29). This is a principle as certain in the laws of mind, and as reliable as that a straight line is the shortest distance between two given points, or the demonstrated theorem that in every right-angled triangle the square of the hypothenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. Faith may be defined to be the power of perceiving spiritual realities that lie above and beyond the range of the senses, and a confidence in those higher truths. This is essentially the definition of it given by the unknown Kabalistic author of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Heb. xi: 1).

Faith is the source of all spiritual power. The end and purpose of all education is, and will be of our present studies, the achievement of spiritual development and the attainment of a truly spiritual mode and habit of thought. In other words, our aim should be expressed in the comprehensive prayer, "Lord, increase our faith" (Luke xvii: 5). This implies that we already have faith in a degree, which only needs to be augmented and turned in the right direction. On this subject Mr. A. P. Sinnett very justly remarks: "One may illustrate this point by reference to a very common-place physical exercise. Every man living, having the ordinary use of his limbs, is qualified to swim. But put those who cannot swim, as the common phrase goes, into deep water, and they will struggle and be drowned. The mere way to move the limbs is no mystery; but unless the swimmer in moving them has a full belief that such movement will produce the required result, the required result is not produced. In this case we are dealing with mechanical forces merely, but the same principle runs up into dealings with subtler forces." Of the power which resides in faith, he gives as instances the marvels wrought by the genuine

Oriental adepts. Their training is designed to develop the principle of faith. (Esoteric Buddhism, p. 12.) Read also on the same subject the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews. But every one will ask, "How may we get this faith?" In this case the questioner is like the man who is anxiously hunting around the house to find his spectacles, but all the time has them on and is looking through them. We already have faith, and are perpetually acting under its influence and guidance, but have not learned its higher appliIcations and uses. Faith is only that intuitive intellectual perception that lies above the range of the sensuous plane of the mind's action, and which we call into exercise every time we correct the illusions of our senses, and judge and act contrary to their deceptive appearances. Whenever we judge, not according to appearance, but judge righteously or according to a divine rectitude of thought, we exercise faith. When I perceive that the reflected image from a mirror is not a solid object behind the mirror, or that the earth turns on its axis, and that the sun does not rise and set, it is that higher form of knowledge which is called faith.

According to the idealistic philosophy, thought and existence are absolutely identical and inseparable. This is a principle as universally true as that two straight lines which are parallel will never meet, however far they may be extended, or the proposition that the whole of a thing is equal to the sum of all its parts. Bishop Berkeley, after remarking that time is nothing abstracted from the succession of ideas in our minds, and that the duration of any finite existence must be estimated by the number of ideas, or actions, succeeding each other in that individual spirit or mind, says: "Hence, it is a plain consequence that the soul always thinks; and, in truth, whoever shall go about to divide in his thoughts, or abstract the existence of a spirit from its cogitation, will, I believe, find it no easy task." (Principles of Human Knowledge, sec. 98.)

Pure thought is the summit of our being. It is the Kabal istic Crown, and is spirit; and, by divine appointment, governs and controls all below it. It is the point where our individual existence flows out from the "Unknown." The attainment of the power to think spiritually and spontaneously, in contradistinction from the possession of a set of borrowed opinions, is the "crown of life." Since to think and to exist are one and the same, a man in whatsoever condition he is, whether in health or disease, whether happy or the opposite, is only the expression or external translation of his thoughts and ideas. He is the perpetual creation of his fixed mode of thought. The world and all the things it contains, including the body of man, having no thought in themselves, do not exist in and for themselves, but exist only in and as Schopenhaur has truly said, are to us only what we think and believe them to be. As thought and existence are identical, a change of thought must necessarily modify our existence. To think a change in our bodily condition, and not merely to think about it, will determine all the living forces toward that result, as certainly as a stream issuing from a fountain will flow in another direction when we change the direction of its channel.

us,

If thought is the first act of our individual spiritual existence, and a perpetual concomitant of it, and is the primal force and most subtle energy in the universe, the question will arise, is thought free and subject to no law above itself? Can we think when and what we please? In disease, can I think that I am well? In pain, can I think that I have no pain? I answer unhesitatingly, I can. All things are possible to thought. I can think that five plus four is twelve, but may not be able to believe it until the thought is joined with feeling in some degree. A man may think that his dwelling is on fire when it is not, and he is affected by it; or he may think that his house is not on fire when it is, and in the latter case he feels no alarm. In both cases